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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25634848">Imprisoned (This Time for Real)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazy8/pseuds/Lazy8'>Lazy8</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Broken Bones, Cultural genocide, Episode: s01e06 Imprisoned, Gen, Harm to Children, Prisoner abuse, Prisoner of War, Serious Injuries, Surviving Southern Waterbenders, War Crimes, Water Tribe Solidarity, Wrongful Imprisonment</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:48:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,292</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25634848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazy8/pseuds/Lazy8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara's plan to rally Haru and the other imprisoned earthbenders goes horribly, horribly wrong, and instead of helping others to freedom, she finds herself in a prison of her own. After waking the Avatar, she'd hoped to help put an end to the war, but now, it may be all she can manage just to survive.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Katara &amp; The Gaang (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846456</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bad Things Happen Bingo</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Imprisoned (This Time for Real)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Prompt:</b> Withholding Medical Treatment<br/><b>Hurt Character:</b> Katara<br/><b>Comforting Character(s):</b> Gaang</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was supposed to be <em>so simple</em>.</p>
<p>Fake earthbending. Get herself arrested. Rescue Haru and all of the other earthbenders who'd been captured. Have Sokka and Aang pick her up after her work was done, and get away on Appa before the Fire Nation knew what had hit them.</p>
<p>Except it wasn't, and they hadn't, and somehow the warden had <em>known</em> that she wasn't actually an earthbender, and before Katara could even so much as open her mouth she'd found herself whisked away and chained up in the hold of a transport ship on its way to a dry-land Fire Nation prison.</p>
<p>She didn't know where Sokka and Aang were, but if they hadn't come to rescue her yet, she was probably already out of their reach. Now, she was in deeper trouble than she ever could have imagined; she had no water to fight with, she had no waterbending training even if she did, and when she'd tried to resist her captors via more conventional struggling, she'd ended up with nothing but a broken wrist to show for her trouble.</p>
<p>She had no idea how long she'd been down there by the time the door creaked open. Long enough for her mouth to go dry. Long enough for her stomach to start rumbling. Long enough for her limbs to cramp up because she couldn't move them.</p>
<p>"Well, well, well," the new guard crooned as he stepped into her cell. "Not nearly so rebellious now, are we?"</p>
<p>Katara lunged forward, yanking her uninjured hand against her chains. "Let me loose," she snarled, "and I'll show you <em>rebellious</em>."</p>
<p>"I think not." The captain turned, hands clasped behind his back. "Unfortunately, the prison that you so thoughtfully broke yourself into specializes in containing <em>earth</em>benders, so I'm afraid that your efforts did fall a little flat. Even so, you did both us and yourself quite the favor, turning yourself in before the Southern Raiders had to be sent to do the job. A truly fortunate turn of events, for everyone involved."</p>
<p>"<em>Fortunate?</em>" Katara snarled. "You're keeping me here in chains and you're calling it <em>fortunate?</em>"</p>
<p>"Quite fortunate," the captain reiterated, completely unruffled by her anger. "You may be in chains, but you <em>are</em> still alive… though if you continue to behave in such a fashion, you may soon wish you weren't."</p><hr/>
<p>Throughout the entirety of the transfer, none of the guards made even a cursory attempt to treat her broken wrist.</p>
<p>It needed to be set—she <em>knew</em> it needed to be set—but they already knew she was injured, and had done nothing; she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of begging for medical treatment she might or might not actually <em>get</em>. She even would have tried setting it herself, if she'd had the option… but they never took the cuffs off, and jerking it around without being able to see or feel what she was doing would only make things <em>worse</em>, so Katara did the only thing she <em>could</em> do and tried not to jostle it, just gritted her teeth through the pain as the days passed by and the motion of the ship told her of the water that was all around her but always just out of her reach.</p>
<p>…even if she <em>could</em> get to the water, what could she hope to <em>do</em> with it? She was barely trained, with only a handful of self-taught lessons to go by. She was also in the middle of the ocean, with nowhere to go and no means of getting there on her own. Like it or not, she was at the Fire Nation's mercy.</p>
<p>She had been hoping, naively, that things would get better once they got her to wherever she was going. Instead, they got worse.</p>
<p>They moved her from a tiny cell into a tiny cage, in a room kept so dry that her lips cracked open and bled within the first few hours. At long last, the cuffs came off, but by then it was too late: the bones had already started to heal together in the wrong position, and even the slightest movement around the injury caused agony to spike through her wrist: Katara did not think she'd be able to muster up the fortitude she needed to break it again and nudge it back into the proper alignment.</p><hr/>
<p>Katara was not the only one in there. The entirety of the building was full of other cages, most of them empty but a small handful still housing occupants: men and women of the Southern Water Tribe, murmuring among themselves at the sight of a new face. She was the only one among them whose skin bore no wrinkles, whose hair had yet to turn gray.</p>
<p>"Who are you, child?" they asked. "Wherever did you come from?"</p>
<p>At first, Katara didn't answer—<em>couldn't</em> answer, could only curl up in the corner of her cage and weep. Katara knew none of these people: they had all been taken away long before she was born. The one person she would have given almost anything to see again was also the one she already knew wasn't there.</p>
<p>Then, there was the chance that maybe some of them <em>had</em> known her parents, and some of them had <em>certainly</em> known her Gran-Gran, and that any conversation would inevitably lead to exploring those shared connections, and then she'd have to explain that her mother had been murdered in a Fire Nation raid, and that she hadn't seen her father for years because he was away at war, and that she and her brother had run off with the Avatar and left Gran-Gran all alone.</p>
<p>In the end, it wasn't thoughts of her family that got her talking: it was thoughts of Aang. There was no hope in this place, <em>had</em> been no hope for at least the past few decades; her fellow prisoners had had nothing to ease their despair for longer than Katara had even been alive. If she could do nothing else, at least she could spread word of the Avatar's return.</p>
<p>"Aang," she whispered to the others in between the guard shifts, after night had fallen. "The new Avatar is an airbender named Aang. He's only twelve years old, and he's got a lot to learn, but… I believe Aang can save the world." The whisper was picked up, and carried along the cells: <em>Did you hear? The Avatar is back. His name is Aang, and he's going to save us. Aang, Aang, Aang.</em></p>
<p>The whispers had only continued for a few days before several of the guards sauntered in, swinging their batons in a way that looked idle but was actually anything but.</p>
<p>"Which one of you is the troublemaker who's been spreading rumors about the Avatar?" their leader demanded, slapping his baton in a steady rhythm against his palm, a sadistic smirk on his face and his eyes glinting with malice as they flicked from cage to cage.</p>
<p>To her fellow prisoners' credit, nobody made a move to rat her out. Unfortunately for her, however, they didn't actually <em>have</em> to: the guards needed only to look to the newcomer, young enough to be the granddaughter of any of the others and lacking the harsh lessons that had been beaten into them over several decades' worth of imprisonment, to know that it was Katara.</p>
<p>In retaliation for her transgression, they dragged her from her cell and broke her <em>other</em> arm.</p>
<p>The next few weeks were a haze of agony. Katara tried to set it properly this time—she really, really did. Every time she tried, though, she had to contend with not just the pain in her arm, but also the ache in her opposite wrist, which was still only partially healed. Every attempt she made inevitably ended with her curled up in the corner of her cage, sobbing in pain and with the knowledge that even if she <em>had</em> managed to realign the bones, she had no means of splinting the injury to ensure they <em>stayed</em> that way. Then, when the guards forced her into the heavy manacles in preparation for giving her her daily allotment of water, they tugged and yanked her arms into place roughly, laughing at her cries of pain, and she knew that all her hours of agonizing effort had just been undone in a matter of seconds.</p>
<p>The other prisoners offered what comfort they could: whispers of reassurance, snatches of old folk tales or traditional Water Tribe lullabies, though if any of the guards caught them at it, they were punished just as brutally. One by one, Katara learned their names: Ahnah, Kallik, Tanaraq, Arnaq. One by one, they offered advice, all of it contradictory: <em>Keep your head down and don't cause trouble. Fight to the bitter end. Never forget who you are. Don't let our culture die.</em></p>
<p>What decided her at the end was the same thing that had given her hope at the beginning: Aang. The Avatar was back, and he was going to save the world. She repeated it, over and over, in the privacy of her own head at night when the pain and despair made it impossible to sleep, in whispered reassurances to the others at every moment they were unobserved, and in screams of defiance that brought the guards' batons down on her limbs again and again.</p><hr/>
<p>Katara didn't know how long she'd been in there, only that it had been long enough for both of her arms to have been broken several <em>more</em> times, and for her legs to have shared in their fate, by the time the news, whispered and gossiped about among the guards, finally filtered down to the prisoners: the Fire Lord himself was coming for an inspection.</p>
<p>When the news reached her ears, it felt as if her insides had turned to ice. Though she knew of the Fire Lord only in the most abstract of terms, she also knew that his interest could mean nothing good: he was the one who'd started this war, the one who'd kept it going, who'd devastated her tribe and torn her family apart. That the atrocities had taken place over several generations' worth of Fire Lords did not matter: since the day the war had started, every Fire Lord who'd held the throne had chosen to follow in his father's footsteps. As far as she was concerned, they were <em>all</em> responsible.</p>
<p>It seemed as if the news had much the same effect on the others as it did on her, and that night, the very air of the prison was permeated with whispers that no threat or punishment from the guards could stop. "Has this ever happened before?" Katara asked, feeling out of her depth.</p>
<p>"No," Tanaraq answered after a few moments of silence. "Never."</p>
<p>That did nothing whatsoever to comfort her.</p>
<p>Katara couldn't even remember the last time she had been free of pain, much less been able to find a sleeping position that was actually <em>comfortable</em>. All there was for her now was something that hurt, and something else that hurt <em>more</em>. This time, though, the reasons she didn't sleep were completely unrelated to the physical discomfort. That night, she did not think that <em>any</em> of them slept. The whispers continued to drift between the cages—Why was he coming? What did he want?—and she tossed and turned in her own cloud of restless anxiety.</p>
<p>Tension sparked from cage to cage as the prison was touched by the first rays of the morning's light, and they began to hear the approach of many sets of footsteps. This was not the way the guards usually behaved: their voices were subdued, deferential. Then, the door finally opened, and Katara froze as she got her first glimpse of the Fire Lord.</p>
<p>She <em>knew</em> him.</p>
<p>He'd plowed his ship into her village, threatened her Gran-Gran, kidnapped Aang, and burned Kyoshi Island to the ground. Sure, his clothing was richer now, and somewhere along the line he'd lost that stupid ponytail and let the rest of his hair grow out, but the scar on his face was unmistakable: it was Zuko.</p>
<p>Katara stiffened. Somehow, the whispers of the Avatar's return—whispers that <em>she'd</em> started spreading—must have gotten back to him, and he'd come here in search of information that would help him find Aang. That was the only <em>possible</em> reason he could have taken an interest in this particular prison. How and when he had stopped being a prince and become the new Fire Lord was not relevant: as far as she was concerned, that only made him <em>more</em> of a threat than he had been before. The only thing that mattered was that he was here, and he was after Aang, and Katara couldn't give him what he wanted no matter what he decided to do to her, never mind that it was probably going to be worse than she could even <em>imagine…</em></p>
<p>Then, her increasingly-panicked train of thought ground to an abrupt halt as Prince (Fire Lord?) Zuko shifted his position, and out from behind him stepped…</p>
<p>"<em>Sokka!?</em>"</p>
<p>Katara stopped thinking about why Zuko was here. She stopped worrying about how she was going to survive whatever came next. She only caught a few words of what Zuko was saying about prisoner abuse, or about rectifying the previous Fire Lord's war crimes. The only thing she could see in that moment was her brother, as he snatched the keys away from the nearest stunned guard and opened the door of her cage.</p><hr/>
<p>Over the next few days, it was explained to her, in bits and pieces, what had happened while she had been imprisoned.</p>
<p>The first thing she learned was that Sokka and Aang had tried to come after her, but that by the time they'd realized the plan had gone awry, she'd already been caught and was well on her way to the Fire Nation. "I'm so, so sorry, Katara," Aang sobbed, holding her hand gently between both of his own. "If I'd listened to Sokka, and gone back for you earlier, this never would have happened."</p>
<p>Shortly after that, Aang's earthbending teacher, a girl named Toph who looked if anything to be even younger than he was, informed her that she'd had to pin Sokka to the wall to stop him from killing (now ex) Fire Lord Ozai with his bare hands.</p>
<p>"And I was just about ready to <em>let</em> him, too," she continued, tossing a hunk of strangely black metal up into the air and bending it into several fantastic shapes before catching it again, a formless blob once more. "But the way I figure, if anyone has the right to decide whether to pound Loser Lord into the ground, it's probably you."</p>
<p>"I… thanks?" In all honesty, Katara wasn't quite sure what to make of Toph, or of her increasingly graphic suggestions for ways to take vengeance. At the moment, the only thing she knew was that the thought of coming face to face with the man who had ordered this done to her made her feel sick to her stomach.</p>
<p>That was another thing: Aang had defeated Ozai not by killing him, but by taking away his bending. Zuko, who'd gone from an enemy to an ally and taught Aang firebending while she wasn't looking, had taken the throne in his place and put an end to the Hundred Year War.</p>
<p>It was over. The war was over, and Katara hadn't even been there to see it. To help stop it.</p>
<p>All of the surviving Southern Water Tribe benders (and there were <em>so few</em> of them left, compared to the number who had been captured, imprisoned, and lived out the rest of their lives rotting away in a Fire Nation jail cell) were granted accommodations in the royal palace until arrangements could be made for them to go home. Katara had to be carried over in a palanquin because she could no longer walk.</p>
<p>No sooner had she been settled into a chair than a team of Fire Nation physicians descended on her. Katara held herself very, very still as they examined her arms and legs, and fought not to scream whenever someone unexpectedly pressed their fingers into the flesh around the breaks.</p>
<p>"These will all have to be broken again, and then set so they heal <em>right</em> this time," the head physician, an old woman who'd introduced herself as Doctor Hiroko, informed her bluntly. "I'm sorry, but there's no way around it." Suki, who'd stayed by her side the whole time to make absolutely <em>sure</em> there were no further abuses, squeezed her shoulder.</p>
<p>"I already knew as much," Katara replied, squeezing her eyes shut. "Do whatever you have to."</p>
<p>Katara hated every part of the process that followed. She hated the drugs they gave her, which left a strange aftertaste in her mouth and made her feel all fuzzy-headed, not quite unconscious but unable to string two thoughts together or to get a clear grasp on her surroundings. She hated the spikes and throbs of pain that made themselves known as soon as the drugs began to wear off. She hated being bedridden, her legs held immobile in uncomfortable metal braces. Most of all, though, she hated knowing that she wasn't done, and that she was eventually going to have to do this all over <em>again</em>, because the doctors had judged that breaking and re-setting all four limbs at once would be far too great of a strain.</p>
<p>That night, Ahnah visited her in her room.</p>
<p>Katara hadn't been able to sleep since the painkiller wore off, but hated the way it made her feel so much that she'd been putting off taking the next dose. So, when she heard the soft knock at the door, she called "Come in" in a voice that was just as soft. Beside her, Sokka grunted and threw an arm around her waist as if to make sure that she was still there, but did not wake. Katara hadn't shared a bed with her brother since they were both little kids—but this time, she'd asked him to stay, and he had.</p>
<p>The door eased open, and Ahnah slipped into the room. She'd always been the one to advise Katara to keep her head down, not to draw attention to herself, not to make things harder than they had to be. That advice, at least, seemed to have worked well enough for the older waterbender: out of all the other prisoners who'd survived long enough to be released, the physicians had declared her to be in the best health—or at least, the least awful health.</p>
<p>"I can help you," she said now, taking the chair by the side of the bed. "May I?"</p>
<p>Katara hesitated for a second, but then nodded. While she'd already had enough poking and prodding to last her a lifetime and then some, she <em>was</em> in a lot of pain, and whatever it was that Ahnah was planning, at least there wasn't much she could to do make things <em>worse</em>.</p>
<p>A cup and a pitcher of water had been left by her bedside. As she watched, Ahnah drew a stream of water from the pitcher, using it to glove her hands before laying them on Katara's leg.</p>
<p>Katara nearly yelped in surprise when the water began to <em>glow—</em>but then relaxed, because whatever Ahnah was doing, it wasn't hurting her. As a matter of fact, the water was cool and soothing and its touch was easing away the aches and pains she'd been starting to think she'd <em>never</em> get rid of…</p>
<p>"Child," Ahnah said gently, in response to the surprise that must have been showing on her face, "did you really never know that water can heal?"</p>
<p>'How was I <em>supposed</em> to know?' Katara wanted to scream. 'There were never any other waterbenders around to <em>tell</em> me!' When she tried to speak them out loud, however, the words seemed to stick in her throat, and when they finally <em>did</em> come out, it was in an inarticulate sob.</p><hr/>
<p>The next day, the new Fire Lord stopped in for a visit.</p>
<p>Katara had seen nothing of Fire Lord Zuko since the day he had come in to order the prisoners released, and heard very little. According to Sokka, he had proven himself. According to Aang, he had become a good friend. According to Toph (who could, apparently, use her earthbending to tell truth from lies), he was sincere about wanting to help them end the war. Whatever it was that had brought him over to their side, though, <em>Katara</em> had seen none of it. <em>Her</em> last memories of him consisted of him bringing a group of soldiers marching onto Kyoshi Island and leaving a village of burning houses in his wake.</p>
<p>Now, she didn't know <em>what</em> to make of him. This time, he'd knocked politely and asked to come in, and let out a hiss of empathy at the sight of her injuries, and now sat fidgeting by her bedside and looking so awkward it <em>hurt</em>. Ever since the day he'd plowed his ship into her village, Katara had never seen him as anything but the enemy. Now, she could only see a teenage boy, hardly any older than her brother, who didn't know how to handle this situation any better than she did.</p>
<p>"I… think this is yours," he said at last, pulling a clenched fist from somewhere within the folds of his robes.</p>
<p>Katara, caught somewhere between incredulity, curiosity, and caution, leaned forward as he opened his fingers, unable to fathom what he could <em>possibly</em> have that he thought she would want… only to see a familiar pendant resting in the palm of his hand.</p>
<p>"My mother's necklace!" She reached for it eagerly, only to let out a cry of frustration when she did not have enough mobility in her arms to actually put it on.</p>
<p>"Maybe I can… you know…" Zuko gestured awkwardly. "…help?" he finished in a small voice as Katara glared at him.</p>
<p>She wanted to say that she didn't want <em>anything</em> from him. That his nation had hurt her tribe enough already, had hurt her <em>family</em> enough already, and couldn't he just leave off? Then, however, she let out a sigh. One person could not be held responsible for the actions of his nation, or of his ancestors, and if Sokka and Aang trusted him she thought it was only fair for her to at least give him the same chance that they had. Besides, the fact remained that she <em>did</em> need help, and suddenly it just didn't seem worth it to wait for someone else to drop by solely for the sake of holding onto a grudge. So, as much as she hated to expose the back of her neck to him, Katara gave a curt nod, and leaned forward.</p>
<p>"I know you probably don't want to hear it from me," Zuko said quietly as tied the necklace around her throat, his fingers clumsy with the unfamiliar workmanship. "And I know there's nothing I can do or say that's going to fix this. But for what it's worth… I'm really, really sorry for what the Fire Nation has done to you and your people. If there's anything I can do to make it up to you, I will."</p>
<p>He was already on his way out the door by the time Katara answered. "Can you bring my mother back?" Her voice came out in a whisper.</p>
<p>Zuko paused in the doorway, but left without a response. They both already knew there was no answer he could give.</p><hr/>
<p>It took a few more sessions with Ahnah, but at long last, her legs were fully healed… which wasn't nearly as much of a relief as it should have been, considering that that just meant it was time to start re-breaking her arms.</p>
<p><em>The sooner I do this, the quicker it'll be over with</em>, Katara reminded herself as she forced down the nasty concoction the Fire Nation physicians had given her to drink.</p>
<p>Over the next few days, days filled with intermittent lucidity and pain and yet another brace that dug into her skin despite all the padding that had been wrapped underneath it, Katara forced herself to focus on the fact that she was going to walk again, and that after all of this was over, she would have the full use of her arms back as well. All the discomfort and pain and indignity would be worth it if it meant getting out of this bed and back on her feet and maybe even learning how to waterbend, for real this time. <em>I'm going to walk</em>, she reminded herself as Ahnah ran glowing water up and down her limbs. <em>I'm going to walk</em>, as one of the physicians came in with a bedpan. <em>I'm going to walk</em>, as Suki spooned food into her mouth because her hands and arms still weren't functional enough for her to do it on her own.</p>
<p>…and kept on telling herself that, again and again and again, as she took her first few tottering steps around the room with Sokka holding her up on one side and Suki on the other, when she would have given anything to be able to forego their support and just <em>run</em>. She couldn't run, though; it would take weeks and months of rehabilitation and careful exercise before she would be able to run, or for that matter to <em>walk</em> normally, and in the meantime her arm was barely even <em>beginning</em> to heal.</p>
<p>She was able to venture outside, now. It was exhausting, and painful, but she knew she would never get better unless she got up and moved around, and besides, the whole thing was worth it just to get out of her room.</p>
<p>At first, she'd only gone as far as the courtyard, sitting on a bench to watch as her fellow prisoners practiced their waterbending, sometimes joined by Aang. There was only so long Katara could watch, though, before her fingers began to twitch with the need to call to the water, and she wasn't there yet, and being able to do nothing but sit and observe knowing that she could not yet reclaim this part of her culture was just too painful. So, as time went on, she found herself spending less of her time in the courtyard and more of it alone in the palace gardens.</p>
<p>She had found a spot she liked, a small garden full of flowering bushes and a small pond hosting a family of turtle-ducks under the shade of a tree. She'd taken to visiting it whenever she needed to take some exercise and wanted time to herself. This time, though, Katara stepped into the garden only to realize that she was not as alone as she'd thought: there, kneeling by the turtle-duck pond, was a figure in rich dark robes with a golden crown glinting in his hair.</p>
<p>Immediately, she took a step back, suddenly wanting nothing more than to leave. Zuko must have heard her, however, for he turned his head to look at her right as she was taking her first step back. "No—wait," he called, pushing himself to his feet in a single smooth motion that Katara wouldn't have thought twice about half a year ago, but now envied deeply. "Please." He gestured to the pond behind him. "You're welcome here, at any time. Please don't feel as if you have to leave on my account."</p>
<p>There was no dignified way to make a retreat: if she tried to run, she was going to end up flat on her face. Katara was on the brink of trying it anyway, wanting neither to stay nor to turn around and hobble away and feel his eyes on the back of her head the whole time, but was brought up short by something she hadn't noticed in her moment of panic: Fire Lord Zuko, the prince who'd burned villages and hunted the Avatar, had a hand full of breadcrumbs, and a whole brood of ducklings waddling around at his feet.</p>
<p>It wasn't enough to make her trust him, and it wasn't enough to make her forget the Zuko who'd hunted them before she'd been imprisoned. Even so, the scene was so disconcerting, almost bordering on the surreal, that she found herself taking a step forward rather than back. Zuko reached out to take her arm—the one that wasn't currently in a sling—and helped her lower herself onto the grass beside him.</p>
<p>"My mother used to bring me out here when I was a kid," he explained, holding his hand out over the water. Within seconds, he was swarmed by ducklings. "I never did find out exactly what happened to her, but… I'm pretty sure she gave up everything to save my life."</p>
<p>Despite the sticky hot air of late Fire Nation summer, Katara shivered. "I guess that's one thing that we have in common." She buried her face in her knees.</p>
<p>She had no idea how long they ended up sitting there, in silence, with the sun on their backs and the grass staining their clothes, each of them lost in their own little world. Katara had exercises she needed to be doing, and she was sure that the Fire Lord had responsibilities that were far more important than feeding the turtle-ducks, but still, neither moved.</p>
<p>"I've decided," she said at last, not turning her gaze from the family of turtle-ducks that was still swimming about on the water. "About reparations," she elaborated when Zuko gave her a questioning look. He didn't answer out loud, but the slight nod that she could only just see from the corner of her eye let her know that he was listening. "The men responsible for the raids on our tribe. However many of them are still alive. I want them found, and I want them brought to justice."</p>
<p>"I'll do everything in my power. On my honor, you have my word."</p>
<p>This time, she leaned willingly on his arm as he walked her back inside.</p><hr/>
<p>Ever since she and her brother had found Aang inside of that iceberg, Katara had looked forward to everything being <em>over</em>: the end of the war, the return of balance and harmony to the world, a new and better life for her tribe. Now, she was finally beginning to realize that the most difficult part hadn't been winning the final battle: the most difficult part was upon them right now.</p>
<p>Simply putting an end to the war wasn't going to fix the harms it had done to the world, any more than unlocking the door of her cage had mended her battered body. That could only be accomplished with care, and hard work, and above all, time. Even in the best case scenario, there would be lasting scars.</p>
<p>…some hurts would <em>never</em> go away, but that was no excuse for giving up. For not trying to heal whatever <em>could</em> still be healed. What she had been through these past few months was something she would carry with her for the rest of her life. That didn't mean she was broken—and neither was the world.</p>
<p>"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Aang asked as he helped her up into Appa's saddle—she was still walking stiffly, and she probably always would. "Things are still really messy out there—we're going to have our work cut out for us."</p>
<p>"I know, Aang." Katara reached up to touch the pendant on her mother's necklace. "I think I finally do understand."</p>
<p>They said nothing more as they flew off into the unknown.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sometime I'm going to have to make a cause-and-effect flowchart to properly flesh out this AU. For the time being, though, I was mostly thinking about the changes in the relationships of the main cast, probably the biggest of which was between Katara and Zuko. On the one hand, he never got an opportunity to use her mother's necklace against her, they never fought at the North Pole, and he never turned on her in the Crystal Catacombs, so there's not nearly as much bad blood between them here as there was in canon. On the other hand, they didn't get to have any of the bonding experiences that they had in canon either. So right now, she's wary of him, but still willing to give him a chance.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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